Q: I’ve been married for 30 years to the same man. I have dealt with his tantrums, his screaming, and his fits. He’s always had anger management issues. He strangled me once a few months after our son was born and never did it again. I would have left otherwise. He’s had relationships with other women but always swore it was just online. Then, a few years back, I got into a relationship with someone online. I never actually met this person, just as my husband claimed he’d never met the women he was talking to online. I had opened up to this person about our troubles and I talked about my husband’s anger issues and some other private things. This person encouraged me to have an affair but I kept putting him off. Finally, I told him I did it, I had an affair, it was great, etc. It wasn’t true but it seemed like that’s what he wanted to hear. About 30 minutes after I told him I got a call from my husband! This person had sent it all to him! All of our conversations, everything, every detail. My husband flipped out, but we worked it out and moved on.
You’re not a car, of course, and you’re not his property. You were also faithful to him even as he cheated on you—even after he assaulted you—and you stayed in this marriage despite being deprived of sex and other forms intimacy. But even if you guys had been fucking on a daily basis for the last 30 years, DISCORD, even if your husband wasn’t an abusive asshole with anger issues, you would still have every right to indulge in sexual fantasies that don’t involve your husband and every right to explore those fantasies on your own time. Partnered or not, monogamous or not, we are all entitled to a zone of erotic autonomy.
A: What CATMAN described—what CATMAN was looking for—was a relationship. He was fantasizing about his perfect partner and wondering if he was out there somewhere. Since literally everyone does that, KINKY, I wouldn’t describe fantasizing about a perfect partner/partners as a fetish or a kink. Vanilla or mildly kinky or wildly kinky, we all want that perfect match, i.e., a person or people whose sexual desires and/or relationship goals parallel our own. And a lucky few manage to find someone who comes really close.
